Concerns

Conflict of interest between Ashland School Board and Sunstone Housing Collaborative

At least 2 (Jill Franko and Dan Ruby) of the Ashland School Board members have dual interests as members of the board of Sunstone. While there is no legal breach in this case, there are significant ethical concerns about conflicts of interest wherein board members are not centering the needs of students when making decisions about a housing project. Other school staff related to this project are Steve Mitlzel, ASD executive director of operations who is also a board member of Sunstone and Chris Brown, ASD soccer coach and principal architect at Arkitek, the firm partnered with Sunstone to complete their master plan.

Shortage of Field Space in Ashland

Lincoln Field is an essential space used by high school athletics teams and community athletic clubs and organizations. Even with Lincoln Field, high school sports programs are short of field locations requiring the high school to pay for access to North Mountain Park. The Ashland Soccer Club who also use Lincoln Field is required to rent field time in Medford at high costs and sometimes late into the night. High School athletics are a significant factor to enrollment and as they decline, families are choosing to move out of the school district for stronger programs. Without Lincoln field, enrollment will decrease further and Ashland athletic programs will be left without a necessary, safe, and nearby field space.

Housing costs are not the reason enrollment is declining

Sunstone/the school board claims the housing development is necessary because of declining enrollment in the Ashland School district. This is predicated on the assumption that enrollment is declining primarily due to the cost of housing in Ashland. It is falsely reductive to directly correlate declining enrollment with housing costs. Enrollment is declining for various reasons, many of which are, indeed, within the purview of a school board (unlike cost of housing). Some reasons are: the ongoing impact of the pandemic, students choosing online education, students leaving for private schools, staff turnover at a high rate causing decreased academic quality, high rates of drug use at AHS, and students relocating for sports teams. It would benefit the students, staff, and the community as a whole if the school board addressed the challenges facing the district to improve the quality of educational experience being offered so that students and staff felt drawn to be part of it, thus increasing enrollment.

Safety issues for students

The streets, intersections, and neighborhoods around Lincoln field are full of community members, staff, and students trying to transit the area. Traffic and parking are already issues in this area of town. Children are walking, biking, and driving in an already congested area to and from school. Adding over 90 housing units would incredase unsafe conditions for students as they go to and from school. With only 1.25 parking spaces for each unit it will further limit parking in the area for current residents, students, and teachers.

Oregon Fair Housing Laws

Sunstone is advertising this development as housing for families, teachers and school staff. They have designed their plan around California projects where housing regulations differ from Oregon’s fair housing laws. In Oregon, housing cannot be built for a specific demographic with the exception of retirement communities. Sunstone will have to offer their housing to all that qualify financially making it impossible to guarantee this housing will be owned and rented by families, teachers, and school staff.

Affordable housing?

Sunstone originally promoted this project as affordable housing. However, affordable housing defined by the U.S. dept. of Housing and Urban Development is intended to ensure that households do not spend more than 30% of their gross income on housing costs (rent or mortgage, including utilities). So “affordable” housing would target households earning between 30% and 80% area median income (AMI), which is far below the range Sunstone’s project would serve. Their agreement with the developer now states that “the Developer intends to build an approximately 94-unit mixed-use project serving households earning between 80% and 120% AMI” which puts it in the “attainable” bracket for housing costs, otherwise known as middle income housing. At this price point, approximately 58% of Ashland households would be priced out of this housing.

Ashland will continue to lose students

Sunstone’s goal is to increase student enrollment by offering housing to families but their webpage still doesn’t provide an estimate of how many students this will be. A recent (March) Ashland Sneak Preview article interviewing Sunstone’s Dan Ruby stated that there will be an estimated increase of 154 students from the 91 unit development. In the past five years Ashland Schools have lost around 350 students and the school board’s projections show a consistent decline into the future. If enrollment trends continue and Sunstone can complete a 91 unit housing development in the next five years, even with their estimate of additional enrollment, Ashland schools will still have a net loss of nearly 200 students.

Low property appraisal at $1.7-2.25 million

In Portland it's clear in that, for any property sale, they are to seek the highest market value. From what has been discussed and is public knowledge, the ASB is basing their price opinion on a year old appraisal in which the appraiser used comps, the majority of which were in Medford, including a number of them in W Medford, in order to establish value on the subject property. Only one comparable was used from Ashland. It is true that there are not a lot of comps out there, but R-3 Zoning in Ashland is extremely rare, in high demand and should not be compared to those other locations. It is a very valuable piece of property that will only go up in value over time. For example, in 2017, a 2 acre, R-3 lot sold for over $2 million to a developer. That lot was half the size of Lincoln Field. This is an asset that the ASD should hold on to and improve for the students and community, use as a field, and in turn secure an asset for the school district.